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United States

United States

The following text was prepared as a contribution to a discussion on the lessons the 1960's initiated by the primarily Chicago-based Platypus group, which is involved in the revived SDS organization. In the spring issue of their publication, the Platypus comrades reported on their frustration on the cancellation of a public panel discussion on the political experiences of the 1960's after Mike Klonsky and Rick Ayers, prominent SDS leaders from 40 years ago, abruptly withdrew from the forum after seeing the questions that would be posed to the panelists.

In confronting the existence of ethnic, racial, and linguistic differences between workers, the workers' movement has historically been guided by the principle that "workers have no country." Any compromise on this principle represents a capitulation to bourgeois ideology.

Times are hard for
the world economy! Not only has it still to get over last year’s sub-prime
crisis in the US housing market, the overall situation of the capitalist
economy has never seemed so dangerous since the late 1960s: despite all the
efforts of the ruling class to fend it off, the crisis is back with a
vengeance.

There are so many things that are going wrong in
today's world -- wars without end that are killing and displacing millions
around the world; health epidemics that condemn millions to early deaths and
suffering; famines; homelessness; degradation of the environment that is menace
the future of all life on earth; growing pauperization of the working masses of
the world....

Dear Internationalism. I've read your series on how decadence affects
capitalism in the International Review. Even though the union movement is
portrayed as being progressive in the 1920's and 30's, it had moved away from
being a worker's movement and became a hindrance on the working class. In
the US, the situation was different...

In the last few months, there has been a series of
simultaneous strikes and struggles in the US, the likes of which we haven't
seen in quite a while. This includes a number of official union strikes, such
as the strike by the Access-A-Ride drivers in New York who provide
transportation for people with disabilities...

After a 48-hour strike in September,
General Motors and the United Auto Workers sealed a deal that will undoubtedly
serve as a pattern setter for the rest of the industry, that will cut costs and
sacrifice worker and retiree medical benefits forever.

Lou Dobbs, Bill
O'Reilly and an army of rightwing talk show hosts are busy flooding the air
waves with propaganda messages blaming immigrant workers, legal and illegal,
for the social problems that beset American society, particularly the working
class. According to this rightwing propaganda line, the deterioration of our
neighborhoods, increasing crime, unemployment, what they call "cultural and
linguistic pollution," are all caused by immigrant workers.

The failure of the so-called "immigration reform" legislation in the Senate this summer is an absolute disaster for the dominant fraction of the American ruling class and yet another example of its increasing difficulty to control its own political apparatus.

As we have pointed out in other articles on the US national situation - see in particular Inter 142 - American capitalism is currently besieged by a twin malady: an historic crisis of its imperialist power and an economic crisis that is becoming more and more unmanageable...

Wednesday 18 April was an ordinary day in Baghdad. Like virtually every other day of the week, there were bombs. These killed over 190 people, many of them women and children. As so often before, the main target was a market, al-Sadriyah, very close to a building site employing workers who were risking their lives to earn a miserable wage to help their families survive. These attacks, among the most bloody since the fall of Saddam in 2003, were carried out in the same market which was hit on 3 February, killing 130 people. The aim of those who perpetrate such crimes is to kill as many people as they can. The purpose is destruction, the annihilation of human beings whose very existence makes them enemies. This is the rule of bestial hatred; this is a society in profound decomposition.

The collapse of Stalinism in 1989 and, in its wake, the disappearance of the system of imperialist military blocs that had dominated the world imperialist arena since the end of WWII, left the US as the world hegemonic imperialist power. However this historical moment of glory, the zenith of American imperialism, also had a downside.US imperialism found itself with no place to go but down andfacinga crisis of historical proportions.

Scandals are an integral weapon in the internecine struggles within the ruling class, a central means for putting pressure on rival fractions or groups, to force policy changes or to drive certain individuals from positions of power or influence. According to one estimate the Bush administration has been battered by more the 34 scandals in the past six years. Understanding this political backdrop to media scandals is crucial, for otherwise it is impossible to understand where they come from and why they become the subject of such attention.

As this issue of Internationalism goes to press, details are still emerging regarding the senseless mass slaughter of 33 people-including the apparent shooter who committed suicide-on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA. Based on what we can gleam from media accounts so far, this event appears to be but the latest in a long series of horrific school shootings that have rocked the planet over the last decade and a half.

“I don’t know how many times the president, secretary Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran” (Guardian 10/2/07). These were the words of US Defence Secretary Gates in February a few days after President Bush threatened Iran with retaliation for its involvement in Iraq and as a US fleet of some 50 ships, including two aircraft carriers and others with cruise missiles, moved within striking distance of Iran...

The concerted efforts of the dominant fraction of the U.S. ruling class to force a readjustment of imperialist policy in Iraq has run into fierce resistance from hardline stalwarts in the Bush administration. Since the failure to change the ruling team in the 2004 elections, the administration has been under pressure to modify its failed policies...

In his address to the nation on January 10th, Pres. George Bush completely rejected the central recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, ignored the political meaning of the Republican electoral defeat in November, and escalated the war in Iraq by sending more troops and threatening hostilities against Iran and Syria...

In the early morning hours of Nov. 25th five New York City undercover police officers pumped fifty bullets at nearly point blank range into a car occupied by three unarmed black men. Sean Bell, the driver was killed and two passengers were seriously wounded. So outrageous was this assault that even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Governor George Pataki quickly issued public statements decrying the obvious use of “excessive force” by the cops...

The dominant
fraction of the U.S. ruling class has utilized the November election as a means
to adjust the implementation of imperialist policy, to force a recalcitrant
Bush administration to make a much needed midcourse correction in Iraq. By last
winter a consensus had emerged within the dominant fraction that the situation
in Iraq was an absolute mess, a quagmire that jeopardized the long range,
global interests of American imperialism. The U.S. military was clearly
stretched so thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it was incapable of
responding to threats in other parts of the world. This was an intolerable
situation because the exercise of military might abroad is an absolute
necessity for American imperialism in a period in which its hegemony is under
increasing challenge. To make matters worse, the Bush administration’s bungling
of the war in Iraq had completely squandered the ideological gains the U.S.
ruling class had made in manipulating popular acceptance of its overseas
imperialist adventures in the aftermath of 9/11.

The collapse of the Russian superpower in
1989 and with it the disappearance of the system of imperialist blocs that
dominated world affairs since the end of World War II, left the US as the
dominant imperialist power.After more
than a decade and half, in spite of a relentless questioning of this hegemony,
the US has been able to maintain its economic, political and particularly its
military global supremacy.

The current
immigration crisis that has captured so much attention in the capitalist media
is not solely limited to the U.S. but is increasingly experienced by all
capitalist metropoles in Europe and North America. The rioting in France last
autumn by immigrant youth and the children of immigrants, primarily from North
Africa, the recent flood of illegal immigrants and refugees to Spain’s Canary
Islands, and the massive immigrant demonstrations in the U.S. this spring,
predominantly by Latinos, but also including Asian and European immigrants
stand as a clear reminder that this issue is a problem of global capitalism
that exposes the bankruptcy of the capitalist economy and the inexorable
decomposition of its outmoded social system.

This spring
hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, most of them “illegal aliens”, as
the bourgeoisie calls them, predominantly from Latin American countries, took
to the streets in major American cities across the country, from Los Angeles,
to Dallas, to Chicago, to Washington DC, and New York City, protesting a
threatened crackdown proposed in legislation advocated by the right-wing of the
Republican party. The movement seemed to erupt overnight, coming from nowhere.
What is the meaning of these events and what is the class nature of this
movement?

Clearly the proletariat in the U.S. is
completely inscribed in the same generalized return to struggle that has been
occurring on the international level since 2003, as the world working class
struggles to emerge from the disorientation, confusion and reflux in
consciousness that ensued after the fall of the two bloc system at the end of
the 1980s, which was so deep and so profound that in many ways the proletariat,
while not defeated in the historic sense, experienced great difficulty in even
recognizing is own identity as a class and in having confidence in itself as a
class with the capacity to defend itself.

This spring hundreds of thousands of
immigrant workers, most of them “illegal aliens,” as the bourgeoisie calls
them, predominantly from Latin American countries, took to the streets in major
American cities across the country, from Los Angeles, to Dallas, to Chicago, to
Washington DC, and New York City, protesting a threatened crackdown proposed in
legislation advocated by the rightwing of the Republican party. The movement
seemed to erupt overnight, coming from nowhere. What is the meaning of these
events and what is the class nature of this movement?

In this article, the second in the series, we will see how far the
IWW’s theory and practice allowed it to live up to its own goals, and to the
greatest challenge yet faced by the workers’ movement world wide: the outbreak
of history’s first great inter-imperialist conflict in 1914.

Despite
the frightening rhythm of explosions and collapses, and the resulting deaths
and injuries to workers in China’s mines, it took an explosion at a mine in
Sago, West Virginia, where a group of miners were trapped underground, slowly
dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, for the British media to remember just how
dangerous coal extraction can be.

A common
tactic in the capitalist onslaught against pensions and medical
benefits is the attempt to create “multi-tier” systems, in which
new employees receive lower benefits or pensions. It was
precisely this attempt to divide the workers that was at the heart of
the recent struggle in NYC transit. It was
precisely this attempt to divide the workers that was at the heart of
the recent struggle in NYC transit.

The
American ruling class continues to grapple with the political mess created by
its botched election in 2004, which kept the wrong team in power and failed to
achieve a corrective adjustment in imperialist policy. The disagreements within
the ruling class focus on how best to handle the quagmire in Iraq, so that the U.S. will be able to continue to intervene militarily
throughout the world in order to oppose challenges to its continued dominance
as the sole superpower in the world...